Watch: Marsha Blackburn pushes debunked claim to accuse 'big tech' of rigging the November midterms
United States Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) on Tuesday accused Google and other "big tech" companies of rigging the November midterm elections in favor of Democrats.
"This is something that appears to be intentional and purposeful. So you have to ask, are they doing this as an in-kind contribution to the Democratic campaigns? Now, our Republican conference has met with Google and also one of our major mail vendors, and the answers we got from Google were not satisfactory," Blackburn complained to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.
Blackburn's foremost allegation was that Google has been "intentionally" directing Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio's reelection campaign emails into recipients' junk boxes.
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"And you take a campaign like Marco Rubio's, where they intentionally suppress his emails – or I should say it's the appearance that they intentionally suppress – they go out on delay and they arrive and they arrive in people's spam folders," Blackburn said. "And it happens repeatedly."
That claim was thoroughly debunked in a July investigation by The Washington Post. Conservative commentator Erick Erickson even condeded on Substack that the issue was the direct result of sketchy marketing practices and right-wing incompetence:
These are not examples of Google abusing Republican emails. This is an example of Republican consultants abusing emails they have access to and Google and Apple protecting their users from spam. Unfortunately, the Republican consultants have the ears of their leaders and their solution is to pressure Google and Apple to let all the spam go through. They are selling Republican elected officials on the idea that Google is nefariously blocking their emails. The reality is the consultants will not fess up to their abuses. They will not own up to their poor stewardship of email lists. They’ll claim the Democrats are more effective because of tech company biases and not because the Democrats are actually better stewards of an email file.
The reality though is easy to notice.
But Blackburn is still pushing the false narrative, telling Bartiromo that "you have to look at how big tech is trying to use their power, just as they did in 2020, to help to manipulate the result."
Watch below or at this link.
\u201cMarsha Blackburn says Google is rigging the election, and Rubio says he is the biggest victim: \u201cThis appears to be intentional and purposeful. Are they doing this as an in-kind contribution to Democratic campaigns?\u201d Rubio\u2019s emails \u201carrive in people\u2019s spam folders.\u201d\u201d— Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 (@Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6) 1666734087
